Jacksonville.com: Follow through 10/26/97

Sunday, October 26, 1997Story last updated at 11:22 p.m. on Saturday, October 25, 1997

Follow through

Duval realizes dream on Tour

By Garry Smits

Times-Union sports writer

Dreams die hard, especially those nearly 50 years in the making. Tears can come easy, even to adults playing a game.

Bob Duval thought his dream had died, gone with a Titleist he sliced into the water on the 18th hole of the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass Valley Course last fall in the Senior PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament.

He had given up his career as a club pro to pursue the Senior Tour and had financial obligations to six sponsors, friends who hadhelped him with the expenses of playing the Golden Bear Tour that summer.

Duval knew he was in contention, but his swing betrayed him. In agony, he saw the splash, so he cried, silently and quickly, before dropping his ball and recovering to make bogey. At the time, his closing 74 dropped him below 16th place, the cutoff for a Senior Tour card.

''All I could do was tear up,'' Duval recalled. ''You want something so bad, and then you think it's gone, you forget you're an adult. All you can do is cry.''

But miraculously, winds picked up, afternoon scores soared and enough competitors had fallen by the wayside to earn Duval a second chance, a playoff for one of the final conditional spots.

After a birdie on the second hole, he realized the first step of his dream: a Senior Tour card. Tears to joy with one 7-foot putt. And now, in the fall of his Senior Tour rookie year and the spring of his new life, Bob Duval is happy, healthy and successful.

Thanks to a late-season run, Duval is a tap-in from keeping his card for another year. He's 26th on the Senior Tour money list with $482,601, which, if he stays among the top 31 after the next two tournaments, would qualify him for the Energizer Senior Tour Championship Nov. 6-9 and also earn full exempt status for 1998.

It has been a marathon conducted at a sprinter's pace: Duval has played 13 consecutive tournaments, beginning in Utah and ending in Hawaii. Every event has been under the pressure of trying to climb further up the money list.

''He's had a tougher job than I did this year,'' said Duval's 25-year-old son, David, just off his first two PGA Tour victories. ''I was only trying to make the top 30 [on the PGA Tour] to get to the Tour Championship. He had to make the top 31 [on the Senior Tour] to survive.''

But Bob Duval claims to feel no pressure. He's playing golf and getting paid well for it. Those close to him say it's his just reward after years of 18-hour days at the pro shop, playing mini-tour events at municipal courses and investing money, emotional support and time into his son's amateur career.

There also has been tragedy to overcome: the death of his oldest son, Brent, in 1981, his father's death in 1991, and a divorce from his first wife, Diane.

But Duval doesn't look at his success this year as compensation from above.

''I don't think anyone owes you anything,'' Duval said. ''I've worked hard for what I've achieved, and I think that's what makes good things happen. As far as the bad things in life, you develop a selective memory. They're always in the back of your mind, but you have to go on.''

One of his oldest friends, Amelia Island Plantation pro Ron Philo Sr., said Duval may believe he doesn't deserve good fortune. Those closest to him do.

''Bob never wanted anyone to feel sorry for him,'' said Philo, who played with Duval at Florida State. ''But I don't think a single person who has known him isn't happy Bob is having this kind of joy in life.''

Early lessons

If Bob Duval believes fortune is achieved because of hard work, and not through a cosmic balancing act, it may have been ingrained in him by his father, Henry ''Hap'' Duval, while growing up in Schenectady, N.Y.

Robert Thomas Duval was born Oct. 9, 1946, into a working-class home and an atmosphere of self-reliance. His grandfather built golf courses for the WPA, and Duval said there were times when he rarely saw his father. Hap worked at the post office from 4 a.m. to 2 p.m., then at the Stamford Golf Club in good weather to give lessons and play with the members until darkness.

Duval picked up a golf club at age 6 and became hooked for two reasons: He loved the individual, competitive nature of the game, and it was a way to spend time with his father.

With a circle of friends that included Ron Philo and his brother Dave, Duval became one of the top junior players in the Northeast.

''I played with Bob the first time when we were 10 years old, in a junior two-ball tournament,'' Philo said. ''Pretty soon, were were beating any of the adults at either one of our clubs. Bob was always competitive and hated to lose.''

After high school, Duval followed the Philo brothers to Florida State, who had urged golf coach Hugh Durham to recruit him.

''Bob was extremely aggressive on the course,'' said Durham, now the Jacksonville University basketball coach. ''If he had an opening only about four times bigger than the golf ball, he figured he could hit it through. And if he had a one-shot lead with two holes to play, he'd try to win by three.''

Duval played in the shadow of teammate Hubert Green and said he left FSU without considering an attempt at the PGA Tour. He met and married his first wife and after finishing school, took a job as an assistant pro at the Timuquana Country Club in Jacksonville, following Dave Philo again.

Duval worked at Timuquana for one year, and after four years at the Fernandina Beach Municipal Course and a brief stint at Amelia Island Plantation, he went back to Timuquana to be the head professional at the age of 27, the start of a 13-year tenure at one of the area's oldest and most prestigious clubs.

Stuff of legends

Bob Duval golf stories are legion in number. If half are true, he has been in more pockets than lint.

There was the time when he and former Hidden Hills pro Billy Sullivan played against a couple of high rollers from Alabama. Duval planned on 18 holes, then home for lunch, but after he and Sullivan won big, the Alabama duo demanded another nine holes. Then another. And another.

Eventually, with darkness falling, one of them chipped in on the 18th green to win the hole - cutting their losses to Duval and Sullivan from more than $4,000 to $2,200.

''They seemed to be happy with that,'' Duval said.

Duval once shot 28 on the back nine at Timuquana, ending when he holed an 8-iron from the fairway for an eagle-2.

At the annual ''Ward's Landing Shootout,'' a midweek party at the Palm Valley fish camp/bar that was one of the social highlights of Players Championship week, Duval won a bet by hitting a ball over the Intracoastal Waterway, teed up on three stacked beer cans.

With a putter. Standing on one foot.

Last year at a clinic, Duval was challenged to drive a ball between two trees barely 10 yards apart and 250 yards distant on the Marsh Landing range. When he split the trees, he was urged to do it again. Which he did.

Duval said he never really thought about the Senior Tour until his son urged him several years ago. The closer he got to the age of 50, the more he was tempted.

He didn't question his ability but did recognize that tournament golf, played on a weekly basis, was far different than 18- or 36-hole chapter events. So in the summer of 1996, Duval began playing the Golden Bear Tour in Central and South Florida, to get a feel for grinding.

Duval won one tournament and had several other top-10 finishes. He then finished third in first stage Senior Tour qualifying at Marsh Creek in St. Augustine, and went on to get his Tour card at Sawgrass. Six top-10 finishes and two seconds have proven his talent.

Duval seems to have a bright future on the Senior Tour. An exemption for 1998 means playing as much as he wants (30 or more tournaments, as opposed to 23 this year), and more opportunity to win money and tournaments.

And that windy December day at the Valley Course, when Duval believed his dream drowned in a water hazard, seems a lifetime ago. He doesn't have to merely live out dreams of being a Tour golfer through his son - he's there himself.